Introduction

Nowadays, building and maintaining relationship with each other contributes more effectively in
our daily lives. In term of needs and crises, having good social relationship can support us to
create better focus from different perspectives. With the rapid change and development in the
global market, the employees have to gain the skills and competences to adapt to ever changing
environment.

Social support indicates as perception which one is valued, cared for and aid another who needs
help in the social network. It can be occurred from different sources, family, friends, partners,
coworkers and relatives and communities. Different to social support, career social support
specifies the tasks or issues related to career fields. Relating to informational support, career
social support includes information and advices, guidance, encouragement and financial support
for career choices and planning. Moreover, in the workplace, social support can help us to get
employable and more high-pay with such as referral programs.

Employability is conceptualized as a set of human capital, social capital, personal characteristics,

and personal behaviors that makes graduates more likely to gain employment (Clarke, 2018). By
the career construction theory, the important personal resources to be success in labor market
includes career social support and employability skills (Mark L. Savickas, 1997). This theory
provides how individuals choose and decide for job. Career social support is not the only one to
get for a job, moreover, career adaptability, which is one of the social psychological resource,
need to cope with related tasks and challenges within their career. Social support is one of the
important elements of career adaptability (Savickas, 2002).

Moreover, career adaptability and proactive personality are important for employability.
Previous research showed the positive linkage between career adaptability and characteristics
which are social support and proactive personality (Tolentino et al., 2014 & Ebenehi et al.,
2016). Different work structures and competitive work environment needs proactive
personalities to cope with changes effectively in the workplace. The graduate students are
thriving to develop their personalities and adaptability skills to be relevant in the unpredictable
setting for workplace (Savickas et al., 2009).
In Myanmar, the unemployment rate has increased to 1.58 percent at the end of December, 2019
and it has increased 0.08 percent from previous year, according to Macrotrend's data. Moreover,
due to Covid-19 effect in Myanmar, the economy has severely disrupted during lockdown and
restriction periods, especially regional and global supply chain and tourism industry. In April,
according the survey data of ONOW Myanmar, the impact on employment due to Covid-19 has
described the difficulties in job search, job loss and employability. In this competitive and
uncertainty world, the more difficult to get employability, the more resources and competences
are needed. Career social support and career adaptability may function as one of the important
skills for employability and needs to consider how proactive personalities can affect the
employability.

Rationale for the Study

Highlighting the needs for employability of graduate students, career social support acts as the
main roles in transition to complex and challenge labor markets. One of the hottest topics for less
working experiences to enter into the workplaces needs the important personal resources to adapt
into different industry which cannot be the same with learning industry.

According to previous research paper, career social support and career adaptability have effects
on the employability for graduate students. The successful employability in the labor market
needs the career social support while choosing the career choices (Chronister and McWhirter,
2004). People with more resources have to challenge less difficulties and less suffer from stress
and resource loss attack. So nowadays, self-regulating resources which are career adaptability
and proactive personality influence the graduates' employability.

Myanmar is now developing and economy opens for foreign direct investments and currently
improving step by step in the different sectors and industries. For the educational industry,
various foreign studies, private universities and scholarships are directing to many different
opportunities and making more competitive to the labor market for YUEco's MBA students.

So, this also includes as one of the primary reasons to conduct for this study and desires to
describe which factors are indeed needed for employability to cope with changing environment.
For the second point for this study, to better understand and realize the effectiveness of social
resources from the work groups and how career related information support is essential in
employability and career success.

Many studies showed the relationship between the proactive personality and work outcome, and
work engagement. One study showed that belonging proactive behavior in the workplace can
perform the job more effectively (Ashford & Black, 1996; Morrison, 1993a, 1993b; Thompson,
2005). Moreover, proactive components of organizational behavior are beneficial to increase the
employability for individuals (De Vos and Soens, 2008; Chughtai, 2019). By reviewing these
related papers, proactive personality serves as one of the important and essentials characteristics
for individuals. So, this paper needs to examine the influence of proactive personality on the
employability of full-time MBA students in practically. Thus, this study aims to explore for the
factors effecting on employability of MBA students.

Objectives of the Study

This study aims at examining the effect of career social support on career adaptability and
employability of Day MBA students. The main objectives of this study are:

(a) To examine the effect of career social support on career adaptability of full-time MBA
students
(b) To analyze the effect of career adaptability on employability of full-time MBA students
(c) To analyze the effect of moderating role of proactive personality on employability of full-
time MBA students.
Scope and Method of the Study

This paper uses primary descriptive research method to conduct the study according to the
collected primary and secondary data. The scope is restricted on full-time MBA students from
23rd and 24th batch of Yangon University of Economics. For the reason of restriction on the data,
this paper aims to get recent updated employable conditions and the current influencing factors
on employability for graduate full-time MBA students and for the last, to know the difficulties of
low experience levels.

Total population for this study is 177 students so we selected 122 students as sample size
according to Rao soft sample size calculator. The primary data is collected by a structural
questionnaire conducted to the respondents by using simple random sampling method. The
questionnaires mostly consist of five Likert scale questions and multiple-choice questions. Since
the respondents are MBA students, the data will be collected with online and paper forms. The
secondary data is collected from related articles and reports, text books, websites, published
notes, local and global news, previous research papers, international papers, online articles and
previously done local papers. The collected data are analyzed with SPSS tool in this study. This
paper includes restriction in scope so it cannot represent to all MBA students of YUECO and it is
also excluded other major students and does not include information related from other cities.
(data collection period is during…)

Organization of the Study

This study is arranged by five different chapters. Chapter (1) includes introduction, rationale of
the study, followed by objectives of the study, scope, methods and limitation of the study and
organization of the paper. Chapter (2) describes the theoretical background related to the study.
Chapter (3) explores the factors affecting on employability of Day MBA students and Chapter
(4) provides the statistical analysis of data for the study, including the effect of career social
support on career adaptability, the effect of career adaptability on employability and effect of
moderating role of proactive personality on employability of Day MBA students. For the last,
Chapter (5) draws the summary and discussion of findings resulted from the previous chapter.
From the findings, it also includes the suggestions, recommendations and also point out about
parts that need to make further research.